This poetic atmosphere in heroic society and this metrical tendency in its language are facts borne out by many witnesses and proofs, by the observations and conjectures of scholars and by the narrations of travellers and missionaries. Hebraists are divided upon the question whether Hebrew poetry is metrical or rhythmical; but Josephus, Origen and Eusebius are in favour of metre, and St. Jerome asserts that a great part of the book of Job is in hexameter verse. The Arabs, who had no knowledge of writing, preserved their language down to the time when they overran the eastern provinces of the Greek empire by handing on the memory of their national poems. The Egyptians wrote the lives of the dead in verse; the Persians and Chinese committed to verse their earliest history, as also, according to Tacitus, the Germans and, according to Justus Lipsius, the Americans. And since of these two last nations the former was only known to the Romans late in their history and the latter to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, there is good reason to suppose that the same is true of all other barbaric nations ancient and modern.
The earliest metre, found not only in Greece but in Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt, was the heroic or hexameter. Owing to the slowness of thought and the difficulties of pronunciation it was bound at first to have a spondaic character (hence the final foot in the line was always a spondee) and only later when mind and tongue became more active did it admit the dactyl. Then, when this activity still further increased, arose the iambic (pede praesto as Horace calls it) which approximates most nearly to prose; so much so, indeed, that the early prose writers before Gorgias practically used the iambic metre of poetry, and prose frequently passed over into iambic verse. Tragedy was composed in iambics, a metre which is naturally adapted to it, produced as it was to give expression to wrath, according to the story which makes Archilochus invent it to express his anger against Lycambus; and if comedy afterwards adopted the same metre, it was only by the "meaningless following of example," not because the iambic metre was naturally suited to it as it was to tragedy.
The primitive language of these societies was poetical not only through its use of metre but also by being composed through and through of lively metaphors, vivid fancies, striking resemblances, apt comparisons, expressions by means of cause or effect, whole or part, elliptic or pleonastic figures of speech, onomatopoeisms or imitations of sounds by words, abbreviations, compound words, minute circumlocutions, characteristic epithets, contortions in syntax and episodes. All these are ways of making oneself understood devised by men ignorant of the precise words required, or of a word, if in conversation, understood by both parties. The episode is characteristic of women and peasants, who are unable to select what they need and omit what is alien to their subject; contorted language is the result of inability to express oneself directly, or of being prevented from doing so, as may be seen in the case of irascible or contemptuous persons, who make use of the nominative and oblique cases but do not utter verbs. The very words of these languages taken one by one reveal in the frequency of their diphthongs a trace of the song out of which speech arose; and this abundance of diphthongs still remains in the Greek and French languages, which passed rapidly and prematurely from the age of spontaneity to that of reflection. The German language would certainly offer a rich store of heroic forms, with its abundance of compound words which so happily translate those of Greek, and its syntax which exceeds Latin in complexity as Latin does Greek. If German scholars, says Vico several times with a wistful glance at a field of study closed to himself, would use the principles of the New Science in research upon the origins of their language, they would certainly make wonderful discoveries.
The conception of the universe prevalent among the men of this period, and the histories of themselves which they related, of their origins, warfare and fortunes, were also poetical, or rather mythical. It was even the case as we have seen that their conceptions in the sphere of social history preceded those of a cosmological, physical or psychological character. By a rigid application of this principle Vico developed his doctrine of "natural theogony," arising naturally in the imagination on the occasion of certain human needs and utilities: the genesis of the twelve greater Gods, Di maiores, that is to say, the gods invented by the gentes maiores and, to a great extent, brought by them to the foundation of the state. Jupiter or the sky, with his language of lightning, was the author of the first laws of the family; Juno symbolised marriage, Diana matrimonial chastity, Apollo the light of civilisation; Vulcan, Saturn and Cybele were respectively the fire with which the forests were burnt to make clearings, the sowing of seed and the tilling of land; Mars symbolised the warfare of the heroes "pro aris et focis," and Venus civilised beauty. In addition to this celestial Venus arose a plebeian Venus to whom was given the attribute of doves; not as typifying the passion of love, but because they were "degeneres" common birds in comparison with the eagle. A double signification, patrician and plebeian, was given in the same way to Vulcan and Mars. The stormy relations of the fathers with the slaves, the struggles and penalties referred to in the myths of Tantalus and Sisyphus, begin to be reflected in the twelve greater gods. Hercules, struggling with Antaeus, signifies the nobles of the heroic cities, and Antaeus the mutinied slaves led back into the primitive cities on the mountain-tops (Antaeus lifted up into the air) and overcome and bound down to the earth, that is to say forced back to their servile labour. The birth of the tenth divinity, Minerva, expresses the weakening and diminution of the heroic power, since the plebeian Vulcan (the mutinied slaves) strikes the head of Jupiter with an axe, the tool of a servile art. Mercury represents the granting of bonitary rights to the plebs and the maintenance of quiritary rights by the fathers. The last of the twelve deities, Neptune, arose when the peoples descended to the sea-coast; and the legends of Minos, the Argonauts, the Trojan war, the return of Ulysses, Europa and the bull, the Minotaur, Perseus and Theseus refer to colonisation and piracy. The mythological interpretation of history does not cease with the foundation of states. The founders of civilisation, Zoroaster and Mercurius Trimegistus, Orpheus and Confucius, even if they are not strictly gods, are at least poetical characters. Aesop is typical of the "socii" or slaves of the heroes and hence is represented as ugly, that is, devoid of civilised beauty (honestas); and his fable of the lions' society shows to perfection the real relation of the heroes to their slaves, in which the latter share the toils, but not the spoils. Draco, of whom Greek historians tell us nothing but that he imposed a stern code of laws, symbolises the cruelty of the heroes to their slaves. Solon was either a party-leader of the Athenian plebs, or else a simple personification of the plebs itself, considered from the point of view of its vengeance. In the history of Rome we find poetical figures in Romulus, to whom were ascribed all the laws of the orders; in Numa, author of the laws dealing with sacred matters and religious ceremonies; in Tullus Hostilius, who organised and legislated for the military system; in Servius Tullius the author of the census (which has been imagined, contrary to all historical truth, the foundation of a popular republic, whereas it was really the foundation of an aristocratic); and in Tarquinius Priscus, who invented insignia of rank and military uniforms; lastly, the Decemvirs and the Twelve Tables are turned into poetical figures, since to these events and persons were ascribed a great number of laws favourable to liberty and really dating from a later period.
Thus, before philosophers began to elaborate the system of myths by creating new ones when they believed they were interpreting the old (Plato for instance introduced into the myth of Jupiter the idea of the omnipresent and all-pervading ether, his own invention, and other philosophers saw in the birth of Minerva from the head of Jupiter a description of the divine wisdom, or in Chaos and Orcus the confused mass of the universal seeds of nature and the primitive matter of the world), poet-theologians had expressed their ideas in mythology, ideas in which the metaphysical and physical elements were very small, but containing a large nucleus of human and political fact. The Chaos of these theologian-poets was the confusion of human seed during the period of brutal community of women; it was confused because devoid of human regulation, obscure because devoid of the light of civilisation. The misshapen monster Orcus devoured everything because men in this community had no human shape, and were absolved by the void, because through the impossibility of knowing their offspring they left no trace of themselves behind. The four elements of the world corresponded to the four elements of social life: the air where Jupiter lightened, the water of the perennial springs, the fire that burnt the forests, and the earth, the scene of man's labours. Being and subsisting were conceived the former as the act of eating (peasants still say of a sick man, meaning that he is not dead yet, that he is "still eating") and the latter as "standing upon one's feet." The composition of the body was analysed into solids and liquids, that of the soul into air: generation into the act of "concipere" or "concapere," that is, taking hold of neighbouring material bodies, overcoming their resistance and adapting and assimilating them to one's own nature: and all the internal functions of the soul were ascribed to the head, the breast or the heart.
Cosmographical ideas were narrow, confined as they were to the life of these societies. The first heaven was placed no farther off than the tops of the mountains, where the giants saw the lightning play: the lower world was no deeper than a ditch, and was only by degrees enlarged and sunk into the valleys as opposed to the sky, that is to say to the mountain-tops; the earth was identified with the limits of the cultivated fields. In the course of time the sky, the object of contemplation from which auguries were drawn, was lifted to a greater height, and with it the gods and heroes who were attached to the planets and constellations; and thus arose poetical astronomy. Geographical knowledge extended no farther than the country inhabited by each nation; and this is the reason why peoples travelling into foreign and distant lands gave to the new cities and to the mountains, hills, passes, islands and promontories the same names which were borne by those of their native land. Asia or India was at first for the Greeks the eastern part of Greece itself, Europe or Hesperia its western, and Thrace or Scythia its northern district.
But we will not enter into further details; indeed we have omitted much already. It is not the detail that gives its value to Vico's picture of the heroic age. His etymologies, his mythical interpretations, the genesis and chronological succession of his gods, the genesis and succession of his phonetic, metrical and stylistic forms—each, taken by itself, may be contested; but taken as a whole they are rich with a truth which transcends the single propositions. This truth is the mighty effort to recall a form of humanity and society still doubtless living in surviving records and monuments, still recognisable here and there in a fragmentary form in various parts of the modern world; but for centuries, even in Vico's days, buried beneath a mass of irrelevant fancies, conventional types, and prejudices of every kind, which prevented its true characteristics from appearing.